Putting Out The Welcome Mat—With Reservations
Kim du Toit
April 20, 2002
2:47 PM CDT
I read in The Spectator recently about ”The Next Great Exodus” of Brits to places that are not so, well, British. Clearly, there is a growing tide of disgust among intelligent people who can see quite plainly that Britain is not being governed properly. All the nostrums of previous political initiatives seem not to be working: gun bans have led to an increase in violent crime; the National Health Service is disintegrating because that’s what eventually happens to most state-run industries, despite increased spending; the political institutions that have served Britain so well in the past are being dismantled for party gain, and so on, seemingly ad infinitum.
Among the countries that are attracting fed-up Britons are France (!), Australia and, of course, the United States. I’m not going to talk about France or Australia, because I’m not qualified to do so—although the idea of people choosing statist France to escape poor government seems quite ironic, not to say incomprehensible. But as an immigrant to the United States myself, I feel that I need to point out a few facts of American life to any would-be Brit expats.
Of course, you’ll be welcome. This is a nation of immigrants, and most Americans are quite fond of Brits, so you’ll do fine. You certainly won’t experience the withering xenophobia of a Breton or a Gascon, for example, nor the jolting Anglophobia of Australians for “bloody Poms”. But you should understand that when you arrive in the United States you’ll be jolted nevertheless, only by the culture rather than by the people.
Prepare to experience some culture shock. If you think that Britain has become too commercialized, just remember that the U.S. is the place which gave commercialism its bad name. Here are a few examples.
Wastage. This country was built on, and thrives on, excess. At first, you’ll be appalled by the sheer volume of waste, in almost every sphere of life. Understand that the American economy is not driven by need, but by consumption, in a market of almost unimaginable size by comparison to Britain. People are used to, and demand choice, in everything. Thus, your “basic” cable TV service will have about forty(!) channels, most of which are the most appalling rubbish. If you buy the extended set of “pay” channels, you’ll get another two hundred or so channels, but the ratio of quality to rubbish will remain constant. My wife and I get every channel possible, but only watch about ten channels regularly, and cherry-pick among perhaps another dozen. All the rest are bad beyond contempt for us, but clearly not for many others. Remember, there is no BBC-type channel in the United States, no annual “license fee” or State-defined TV program. Even the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), which gets a nominal amount of government funding, is mostly financed by its viewers, and grants from companies and trusts. So if a commercial TV station doesn’t pull the viewers, the advertisers leave, funding dries up, and you can wave goodbye to Channel 26.
Religion. This is a highly religious country. Don’t get distracted by the mass of porno magazines and smutty TV shows: more than fifty percent of the population goes to church/synagogue/mosque every week. Every week. The Bible Belt is alive and well, but you just won’t find it so apparent in the cities. Drive out from any city into the country, say for a hundred miles, and you’ll find a church on every block, a local religious TV channel or three, and 24-hour religious radio stations. In some small country towns, there are as many churches as gun shops. Which leads me to my next point.
Guns. You may as well get used to it: there are a lot of guns in the United States, which may unnerve an expatriate Brit, but those fears are largely groundless. Don’t believe the “Wild West” propaganda. By a conservative estimate, over seventy-five million households (out of a total of ninety-six million) own at least one gun. The total number of guns extant is more than two hundred million—impossible ever to register, restrict or confiscate. Yet, with all those guns out there, the crime rate is very low, comparatively speaking. (The most trenchant bumper sticker statement is surely: ”Yesterday, eighty million gun owners committed no violent crimes.) Where the crime rate is highest, incidentally, is where the proportion of guns to population is the lowest, and the restrictions on gun ownership most egregious, such as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Detroit. And forget the propaganda you’ve heard about the “extremist” National Rifle Association, with its four million members: among a sizeable percentage of gun owners, the NRA is regarded as unforgivably accommodating towards those who would attempt to restrict gun ownership. Forty-four out of the fifty states “allow” their citizens to carry concealed weapons. Many, many gun owners carry guns anyway, regardless of permit, because of their view of the Second Amendment. Yup, they take the “shall not be infringed” language of the Second quite literally. And they certainly don’t trust the “government” to protect them. Which, once again, leads to another major difference between the U.S. and the U.K.
Government, of any kind, is not popular. You have only to read the Constitution to see how much Americans distrust, fear and despise government (and before you come over, I’d recommend that you read the aforementioned document very carefully, because Brits give their government an extraordinary amount of leeway, compared to Americans). Of course, some government is tolerated, especially when it gets to give out goodies, but most Americans loathe government intervention of almost any kind. If you were to ask a cross-section of the population to rank the things they hate the most, the Internal Revenue Service and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms would head almost everyone’s list, even though America’s taxation and gun laws are far less onerous than those of Europe. Americans have watched how government elsewhere has insinuated itself into the lives of its citizens, and wants no part of it. To get a quintessentially American view of government, you need to understand that the Constitution only allows government to perform certain, quite specific, activities. Thus, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan in comparing the U.S.A. to the U.S.S.R.: “Your constitution says that the people may only do certain things; our constitution states that the government may only do certain things.” The inversion is quite unsettling to many Brits, and to Europeans in general, who are accustomed to seeking permission from State bureaucracy, only to find that in the U.S. it is government which has to ask for permission from the people.
Those, then, are some of the major differences you’ll find when you get here. In many cases, the America you’ll find will be quite different to the America you read about in the Press or saw on TV—it’s a far more conservative country than Britain. Your “Conservative” Party is probably to the left of the Democratic Party on most issues, actually.
More important are the things you Brits will have to leave behind if you come over to the United States.
Envy. Whether class-, or wealth-, or status-, envy is not popular here. Other than by the mainstream Press (which is mainly Liberal Rubbish like journos everywhere), achievement is applauded. Monetary wealth is pursued, not envied. Thus, billionaire Bill Gates is not hounded by paparazzi, and it requires a criminal offence for a sports star’s escapades to reach the newspapers; affairs of the heart and drunken escapades are largely ignored. Yes, there are the gossip columns and columnists which deal with Hollywood, but stars are worshipped only on the East- and West coasts, and in any case, the business of Hollywood is fame. If there is anything which grates on Americans about Brits, it’s that relentless habit of pulling people down once they’ve succeeded at something. Nobody should care how many cars Richard Branson owns, or how many houses, or how many companies, for that matter: he’s rich, dummy, and in America being rich means that of course you’re going to own all that stuff—why else would you have worked so hard in the first place?
Reserve (and her sisters, aloofness and understatement). The openness of Americans sometimes irritates the more reticent Brits, accustomed as they are to holding the world at arm’s length. Too bad. A meal is “great!”, rather than “not bad at all”. Or else it’s “lousy” rather “not very good”. Complaining is done directly to the person who actually screwed up, not just to others in one’s circle of acquaintances.
Condescension. Americans are derided in Europe and among the Smart Set for being innocents or naive in the world of politics or foreign relationships. The current sneers about George W. Bush (and the earlier ones about Ronald Reagan) are just a manifestation of this Euro-condescension towards Americans in general. Apart from being insulting, this attitude is largely misplaced. From this side of the Pond, Euros make some fundamental mistakes about Americans too: gentleness is too often misinterpreted as weakness, and simplicity called simplistic. If Americans look at the world simply, it’s because they’re disciples of Occam rather than of Metternich.
Cosmopolitanism, or whatever it is that makes Brits view German election results with greater interest than those in Liverpool. America is a great big huge country, and if Americans don’t know about the new government in the Republic of Turdistan, it’s because Turdistan is less important to them than, say, Cleveland. And please spare us the cant about ignoring international affairs until they become critical: intimate knowledge of the international political dynamic didn’t help Britain when it caved in to Hitler, and it’s not helping modern Germany deal with its influx of Turkish immigrants. either Americans are often accused of parochialism (the national championship of baseball being called the “World Series”, and so on), and to a large degree the accusation is correct. Just put that parochialism in perspective.
Lackadaisical work ethic. If you’re moving here to retire, well and good. If not, understand that Americans work hard, terribly hard. Try an average of ten working days of paid vacation per annum, hardly any public holidays, and only in the (unpopular) labor unions and public sector will you find any semblance of work-to-rule, 9-to-5, or any other jobsworth-style work habits. People eat lunch at their desks, and they certainly don’t much go out to the pub for a couple of lunchtime pints either. Americans take the business of commerce very seriously, for the simple reason that there is endless, constant and fierce competition. Capitalism is a Darwinian existence, and nowhere is that better illustrated than in the land of its foremost practitioner.
Two anecdotes should suffice to illustrate my point.
A good friend of mine is a construction project manager. He has worked in several countries around the world, and just recently moved from Britain to the Bahamas. When I asked him why, he replied that it was just impossible to work with British builders. As he put it: “In America, I’ll ask a contractor if he can start next Tuesday. He’ll say, ‘Oooh, I can’t make Tuesday--but if you’ll only let me start on Thursday, I’ll bring in a double crew until we’ve caught up.’ Now, if I ask a British contractor if he can start next Tuesday, the answer will be, ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ followed by a long silence. If I press him as to when he can start, he’ll say, ‘Not sure… let me get back to you,’ and I may have to wait a whole week just for his answer!
Another example is that of a consultant friend who grew up in Europe, and is now working for the South American division of a major European company. While on a business trip in France, he came upon a small company which seemed to have created a software product that answered a very specific need in his business. Certainly, they had patents which secured them a monopoly for the next five years or so. Excited, the consultant secured the international agency for the product, then went to an industry trade show in Miami to see if there would be interest in the software. Imagine his dismay when he found that over a dozen companies had booths at the trade show, all with products either identical to, or inferior to, or better than his product, with prices to match. He confessed that he preferred to work outside the United States because the competition there was less fierce.
Remember, competition also leads to innovation, where the United States excels. The Internet didn’t take off in Belgium, after all. The savagery of the untrammeled free market appalls most Europeans, which is why their markets are so constrained.
Transplanting hometown institutions. The United States has worked long and hard to improve itself as a society, and hysterical demagogues like Jesse Jackson aside, it has largely managed to achieve a great deal. As I put it to a friend who emigrated a few years after I did:"All the major issues have been taken care of. Everyone has the vote; anyone can be successful at business or at anything they want, if they have the application and the aptitude; most people live in safety; and anyone can say their piece, about anything. The central promise of the Declaration of Independence has been fulfilled: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, for everyone. All the rest is just detail.”
Immigrants coming to the United States should be aware of that, and should not bring their erstwhile homelands’ nostrums over here—we’ve seen them in action, thank you, and they’re either broken, malevolent, impractical or un-Constitutional.
As the man said: “America is not what’s wrong with the world.” That’s why so many want to come here. And for those who would quibble about that, let me quote my recently-emigrated friend: “Show me Paradise, and I’ll buy the tickets. Until then, this will do fine.”
See you soon. Just remember, we drive on the right. Oh, and most of the beer is horrible, compared to your local brew. Try the Sam Adams variants.
